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Old 12-23-2009, 02:22 AM
Harlequin Harlequin is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GpsFrontier View Post
I had considered that back in the summer also but unfortunately it would cost way to much to run the refrigerator, especially in the 128 degree days we have here in the desert during the summer. That's why we don't have a second fridge in the garage for food. I now have a few designs in the works, most revolve around geothermal energy, with coils at least 2 feet underground.
Would you consider using a system that possibly would use a lot of water? If not then I would use an evaporation cooling system. My understanding is that where you live is high heat low humidity in which case these systems work very very well.

What you need is a large surface area and then a thin flow of water over that surface area. The water will evaporate cooling the surface.

From wikipedia these are some rough temperature cooling rates.

Some rough examples clarify this relationship.

* At 32 °C (90 °F) and 15% relative humidity, air may be cooled to nearly 16 °C (61 °F). The dew point for these conditions is 2 °C (36 °F).
* At 32 °C (90 °F) and 50% relative humidity, air may be cooled to about 24 °C (75 °F). The dew point for these conditions is 20 °C (68 °F).
* At 40 °C (104 °F) and 15% relative humidity, air may be cooled to nearly 21 °C (70 °F). The dew point for these conditions is 8 °C (46 °F).

You could build this system one of two ways. One is a large radiator (truck radiator?) and simply pump water to the top of it and let it run down the outside with your nutrient being pumped through the inside. Or build yourself a swamp cooler which is simply a couple of sprayers infront of a fan and direct it at the radiator. The first way would consume less water as you would recirculate the water and only have to top up the reservoir of coolant water. The other method would probably be more effective.
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